


Let’s Keep the Party Polite

by gardnerhill



Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Community: watsons_woes, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 16:25:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7369102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lady Luck favors gamblers with stout hearts and compassionate souls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let’s Keep the Party Polite

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2016 July Watson's Woes Promptfest prompt #2, **Roll The Dice:** Have a character take a risk, whether it's a calculated or a foolhardy one.

“You’re not alone.” Watson kept her voice low and level and her eyes on the man, even as the training Sherlock had inculcated in her kicked in: Male African American, late 30s, flannel shirt and dirty faded jeans from a charity bin, unkempt facial hair; his dilated pupils, the odor of his sweat, and the tremor in the hands holding the assault rifle let her know which of his medications he’d stopped taking. “You don’t have to do this.”  
  
“I’m a dead man,” the gunman whispered. “Look where I am, in the heart of the beast.”  
  
Joan heard the background chatter of radios contrasted with the utter stillness of the police in the station, hiding and huddled and motionless around this drama that had blossomed in their midst, the atmosphere fraught and tense with potential violence. She should have been with them, hiding behind Bell’s desk. But she’d been a sober companion for too long, and was the daughter of a man who was lost somewhere out in the ranks of the homeless. She had seen not a deadly threat but a hurt patient, and had stepped forward to embrace the risk in the hope of stopping a tragedy.  
  
She couldn’t deny that this man had a clear grasp of reality. He was a black man holding a gun in a station full of mostly-white cops. Desperate, frightened, dangerous, but not deranged. He was a step away from dying in a hail of bullets, and all that stopped that horror from occurring was her own presence at the heart of the drama. And what saved her was her clear lack of a police uniform, her unarmed state, and her compassionate voice.  
  
“They won’t hurt you. They know me, and they know I don’t want you hurt.” Her voice spread over the room. From the corner of her eye she could see Captain Gregson, stock-still, but nodding just a little at her words. “You’re still not alone.” As level and calm as when talking to any of her patients. Trust his intelligence, respect his agency. Deduce his condition. “You don’t want to die. You don’t want anyone to die. You just want the pain to stop.”  
  
“Can’t take those things, they’re a trick.” The barrel of the gun quivered, at a level that would send a row of bullets straight across her torso and sever her heart in two before she hit the ground, but only if he pulled the trigger with that finger. “Using me to test their poison. And if I die, they won’t use them on whites. That’s the only reason they give them to me, I’m their damn guinea pig.”  
  
“I understand your fear. But there are laws in place to protect all patients, not just white ones.  You can see I’m not white. I’m not lying to you. Your medicine has been well-tested already and does not need more testing.” Like most medical students Joan had studied Henrietta Lacks’ cells, taken without the dying black cancer patient’s permission in the 1950s. There was enough truth and knowledge of African American history in the man’s talk to add veracity to his rant. “And you’re not a lab animal. Lab animals don’t have names, just numbers. I’m Joan. I help hurt people. What is your name?”  
  
A shuddering breath. A shuddering gun barrel. “Mike. Michael.”  
  
“Michael.” Every ounce of compassion and calm in her voice. Joan hoped the heavily-armed police surrounding them heard that tone and responded to it too. “I know how frightening the voices are, and how much you want to make them be quiet. But this is not the way to keep them quiet. They love to hurt people, don’t they, Michael? Those voices. And if you listen to them, more people will get hurt. The voices were happy when you grabbed that gun, weren’t they? They think you’ll do what they say. But you’re stronger than those voices, Michael. You know that. You can choose to put the gun down, and to come to me for help. If you want to.”  
  
Terror in his eyes. She held them with her own.  
  
In the back of Joan’s mind Marcus Bell dressed as Sky Masterson sang _Luck be a lady tonight…_  
  
The gun barrel dropped.  
  
The cops went into action. Joan stayed, holding the tormented man’s eyes, promising, even as he was surrounded and disarmed and cuffed. “I’ll see you. I’ll see you.” The thread of steel in her voice told the police to honor that promise too, that their consultant was relying on them to not make her words a lie to a sick man.  
  
And only when Michael was taken to lockup pending a trip to Bellevue, and only when Joan Watson was sitting at Bell’s desk, holding a mug of tea he’d gotten her, did she start shaking.  
  
But her powers of deduction did not leave her. So when Sherlock appeared at the station within minutes and made a bee-line for her, white-faced and wide-eyed, and spoke angrily to her about risk and foolhardiness and the limits of medical conscience in a danger zone, she read him: Male Caucasian, late 30s, British ancestry. Blotch of tzatziki sauce on his “Wanna See Big Ben?” T-shirt; he’d been having a shawarma when he’d gotten the call. And in his voice and eyes and body language, stronger even than his fear and anger, was overwhelming pride.


End file.
